Continued growth in spoken word; as Spotify buys audiobook company

3.2 mins to read · Your daily briefing for podcasting and on-demand, with 20,795 subscribers; issue #1165 · Subscribe to Podnews free; and join your peers in supporting us · Share on the web

Podcast subscriptions are here! Give your listeners more, earn recurring revenue, and do it all on your own terms — with Supercast, the podcast subscription platform for serious podcasters. Start now

Spoken word audio listening is dramatically increasing, says new data from Edison Research and NPR. Year-on-year, spoken word audio listening, including to podcasts, is up 8%, says the data - 75% of the US population listens to spoken word every month. (By comparison, 41% listen to podcasts, says the Infinite Dial research, so podcasting has plenty of growth left). You can grab the whole report here.
Audiobooks are coming to Spotify - the company is to acquire Findaway, an audiobook distributor. Findaway will “enable Spotify to quickly scale its audiobook catalog”. It’s experimented with audiobooks before: adding classic books, and a bespoke category for spoken word. An app originally called Spooks but now named Zebralution Audiobooks surfaces more than 3,900 audiobooks on Spotify.
Patreon’s CEO, Jack Conte, is interviewed by Ashley Carman in Hot Pod Insider today. Patreon is to launch streaming video (it already hosts podcasts), and Conte is to launch a podcast of his own.

Classifieds - your job or ad here

Free Podcast Artwork When You Buy Intro+Outro — Expert branding for your podcast! Get free artwork when you order your intro+outro. Sound and look good. Don't compromise - work with the leading experts on audio branding.

Long Shot Leaders Podcast - Follow Us Today! — We tell the stories of underdogs who have found success. Our guests consist of people from all walks of life. Academy Award winners, Holocaust survivors, sports heroes, you name it!

Get Cozy with Snoozecast — Fall asleep faster listening to our vast catalog of soothing sleep stories. New episodes every M/W/F! Over 400 stories available *for free* wherever you listen to podcasts, or on snoozecast.com.

Lead Producer — Kast Media is seeking an expert producer to join our team in running one of our top-performing shows in Society & Culture.

Flood Your Podcast With New Listeners — Growing your podcast is hard, reach passionate podcast listeners on our promotional platform.

Fiction Podcast Contest — Call for entries! 2 x Podcast Winners, $5000 each in production funds & Finalists' Prizes. Early Deadline, Nov 16th.

The Signal ▸ from the Australian ABC, is to end, according to an announcement from one of the podcast’s hosts. The show was launched in February 2018, a daily morning news podcast for 20 and 30-something Australians. “The market has been crowded with similar offerings all largely chasing the same under 40s listener and we’ve watched our growth slow”, says an email sent to ABC News staff obtained by Podnews. The feed will be replaced with ABC News Daily from the end of January, aimed at 40-55 year-old women. The new target competes with the ABC’s local radio audience, and leaves the broadcaster without any daily news audio output aimed at audiences between 24-40.
Staying with daily news podcasts, one doing very well is The Daily ▸ from The New York Times, and it appears to be the most popular English-speaking news podcast in most of Europe - beating the BBC, The Guardian, the FT, or The Economist, says Dávid Tvrdoň.
Libsyn has been announced as Elite Sponsor for the Afros and Audio Podcast Festival. Their announcement contains a 25%-off promo code.
Lieven Heeremans writes about gentrification of the podcast landscape. He argues that the initial phase of the 'creative bohemians’ have made podcasting attractive to new listeners, and now the big commercial operators are moving in to take advantage.

Moves and hires - with Pod People

Hiring production help? Enter Pod People — power your podcast with handpicked audio pros from around the world. Matchmaking is kind of our thing.

Herzliche Glückwünsche to André Schatz and Mario Bruhn, who have been hired as Key Account Managers for Acast in Munich and Hamburg.

Tips and tricks

How my podcast reached one million downloads - John Stange says that giving a show a discoverable name is one of his secrets.

Podcast News - with AdLarge Media

AdLarge, the leading independent podcast ad sales network, presents the Podcast Buying Guide - empowering marketers and agencies to unlock podcast advertising’s full potential. Download your copy today!

Presented by AdLarge Media: Swindled ▸ What’s the worst thing you’d do for money? Join “A Concerned Citizen” as he unravels true stories of white-collar criminals, con artists, and corporate evil. From corruption and fraud to Ponzi schemes and environmental disasters, you don’t want to miss these unimaginable financially-motivated crimes, committed all in the name of greed.

We Need To Talk ▸ was named best radio podcast of the year at the NAB Marconi Radio Awards. It’s mae by WGTS-FM in Washington DC, USA.

Telling Everybody Everything ▸, the podcast from Canadian comedian Katherine Ryan, has renewed with Acast. Ryan notes that the deal reaches audiences “wherever and however they’re listening”, unlike, presumably, a Spotify exclusive.